In July 2024, during a brutal 110-degree week in Dallas, my wife and I returned from vacation to find that our HVAC system had failed. To be honest, this experience was absolutely terrible. As our family slowly melted onto the floor, I began the frantic process of finding someone to fix it.
Over the course of five days, I got three quotes. He looked like this:
HVAC Company #1: 5 days to get someone onsite, missed first appointment, as I quoted $14K for one system With about $3K of materials.
HVAC Company #2: 1 Day Onsite, Shocking $22K bid,
HVAC Company #3: Same Day Onsite, $6K bid,
Same problem, in the same city, and it took about a week to find an answer that solved the problem. In the end, I was convinced that I still wasn’t getting the optimized price, but you have to decide when you get the chance to cook. I chose the cheapest quote with the hope that if the quality was meaningfully worse with the cheaper option, nothing bad would happen.
root problem
I walked away from that experience extremely disappointed. I was particularly irritated by the fact that the “high-trust” companies in Dallas, the ones with thousands of glowing Google reviews, were the worst offenders when it came to price gouging. I spent several weeks researching these companies and came away convinced that most of them paid for fake reviews to get ahead of the negative reviews. I felt like I was wandering in a strange world At ever-increasing prices, at least among players, the consumer experience is rapidly deteriorating due to fake reviews and misleading advertisements.
Why does it take five days to get three completely different quotes on something that happens to millions of Americans every year? Why is the experience so slow, so expensive, so inconsistent and completely devoid of transparency?
Why is it so useless?
We wanted to understand the root causes of why this humiliating experience was occurring. We met with hundreds of CEOs, investors and industry experts; As a result we reached the following:
Information Asymmetry: Homeowners (myself included) don’t know what a fair value is, much less if the solution is the right one. Labor rates, markups, and system specifications are hidden behind technical complexity.
Doctors are writing their own prescriptions: Without transparency, technocrats charge whatever they think they can get away with. When a plumber tells me my air valve is broken, I to pass Let’s say they’re telling the truth because honestly, I don’t know what the air valve is (turns out it’s a $15 part I once paid $2K to have installed).
Market Concentration and Fake Reviews: As private equity consolidates businesses, local competition is reduced. Large companies spend heavily on marketing and reviews, driving out smaller operators. Result: You pay more but you don’t necessarily get better service.
Urgency = Exploitation: When your AC breaks down in 110-degree heat or your pipes burst in the winter, you don’t have the luxury of waiting weeks for multiple quotes. Contractors know this and build business models around high-pressure upsells and inflated prices.
No platform standardization: In ridesharing or food delivery, you can open an app, compare prices and know roughly what you’ll get. In plumbing and HVAC? It’s a shot in the dark every time.
Local Regulatory Gap: Plumbing and HVAC licenses are highly regulated at the local level. When I mean heavily regulated I mean highly regulatedInstalling a water heater without a permit can result in significant fines or jail time, While licensing requirements are fair in themselves, local licensees use regulation to deter new entrants and keep prices high,
Why didn’t tech companies fix this?
On the surface, these problems seem solvable with enough capital and ambition. We thought the same thing when we took over Stellar. But almost every tech company that starts with the “Uber for home maintenance” thesis has ultimately fallen into one of three categories:
Hunter Lead Generator: Think Angie’s List, HomeAdvisor, Thumbtack. They sell you “leads” at high prices, which are often recycled and resold to multiple contractors. Consumers don’t get better service (I don’t enjoy getting 5 quotes), and contractors are pressured on margins. These platforms optimize for transaction volume, not customer experience.
Hero becomes villain: Some startups raise venture money and try to integrate vertically by hiring technology, buying trucks, working as a large contractor. But as capital requirements increase and scale becomes difficult, they curb their ambition and raise rates 10 times and become part of the problem.
Technical Platform (without any ownership): Others remain “asset light”, building scheduling, payment or dispatch software. While this makes life easier for contractors, it does not address consumer concerns regarding transparency, quality or pricing. These platforms skate over the surface of the problem without placing responsibility for the outcome on the consumer.
the gap that remains
This leaves us with a big, unresolved gap: There’s still no platform that provides that magical experience for homeowners in plumbing, HVAC, or other maintenance.
We all know what it should look like:
An Uber-like, magical experience Someone you can count on to show up on time, do the right thing on your behalf, and split prices in an age-old industry.
Transparent pricing (preferably upfront if possible) that doesn’t feel like mortgage negotiations.
Verified quality standards that reward great work rather than big marketing budgets.
A single interface that truly empowers the customer rather than exploiting their urgency.
We see this problem clearly in our seats with Stellar leadership – people deserve a better experience than they are getting today.